The Murch: It’s amazing how much doesn’t happen in a month

By Steve Murch

Over the last month or so I’ve discovered the saying “The more things change the more they stay the same” rings pretty true. In mid-April I had to have knee surgery and for the first couple of weeks I rarely checked in on what was going on in the world. Turns out nothing, really.

Aside from the local news, I didn’t really pay attention to the national news. The first time I thought I’d catch up, I turned on the cable news channels and the names were all exactly the same and the arguments hadn’t changed. Even with the “unveiling” of the Mueller report there wasn’t much changed. I clicked it off and decided I’d check back in a couple of months.

When you’re lying in a hospital bed for a week, there really isn’t a desire to do much of anything that has to do with the outside world aside from check in with family and friends. You truly discover the rest is just stuff going on.

The rest of the stuff going on in the world becomes white noise after a while, doesn’t it? With how little it seems that gets done sometimes by Congress, there might be an argument that could be made for a part-time Congress. Of course there are way too many reasons not to do it, especially given how our president doesn’t realize how laws are made and without Congress there he likely would try to just executive order the hell out of our country.

I can’t believe how few of his ardent supporters don’t at least scratch their heads and wonder why he doesn’t even understand high school government (I know, they don’t give a flying rat’s ass). Every time he goes to the Supreme Court he shows he doesn’t understand the basics of how our government is set up. I would think one of the justices might send a note over the White House to tell someone, anyone, how laws are made.

My left knee was infected and the doctor had to aspirate my knee before they evaluated surgery options. I’ve had broken bones before, so I can only imagine how painful something must be to top having a five inch needle stuck in your body without any anesthesia. The doctor told me that it probably was more painful because of the infection … just before he did it again two weeks later to make sure there wasn’t anymore fluid in knee. Momma, it hurt again.

The one thing that did seem to change in the last several weeks is that more Democrats have announced their candidacy for president. There are more Dems running for 2020 than Republicans who ran in 2016. I wonder how the party will handle debates if they are all still there when the debate season begins.

Maybe they should seed the candidates like the NCAA basketball tournament. Of course to do that properly they would need a few more candidates so they could have a nice easy number like 32 to handle bracketing and eliminations. The first seedings could be based on polling data (you’d need more than one poll so there was a better cross section and representation) and then you would have No. 1 paired against No. 32, No. 2 paired with No. 31, etc. Losers gets eliminated. Do that for two weeks and you’re down to eight candidates. Heck, three weeks and you’re down to four and the public will be able to focus and better handle voting.

At least that’s something that would change as opposed to the same old news day after day.

Steve Murch is a former managing editor and award-winning columnist for The Alpena News. He’s a lifelong Michigan resident, a broken and defeated fan of the Detroit Lions and a forever optimistic fan of the Detroit Tigers. His column will appear most Thursdays.